‘Hunger Games’ Sets Non-Sequel Midnight Record: $19.74 million!

The official numbers are in and, as expected, The Hunger Games broke another record on mignight screenings: Best Non-Sequel Midnight Opening. Though it fall short of the $25 million that Variety reported this morning, the numbers are still very impressive.

The Hunger Games opened to an estimated $19.74 million at midnight, which ranks seventh all-time behind the last three Harry Potter and Twilight movies. It did score the top midnight debut ever for a non-sequel, and it earned more than twice as much as the first Twilight movie ($7 million).

If one is to use the opening pattern of Breaking Dawn Part 1 and New Moon (which also opened outside of the Summer), The Hunger Games would be poised for a three-day take between $90 and $110 million. Since those were sequels, though, it’s probably fair to assume The Hunger Games will at least hold up a little bit better over the next few days.

There’s also a very distant chance that its pattern winds up closer to that of The Dark Knight, which would mean a weekend gross of around $160 million; it’s been nearly four years since that movie came out, though and midnight attendance patterns have changed significantly in that time.

Regardless, The Hunger Games is off to a fantastic start, and it still has a very legitimate shot at passing Alice in Wonderland’s $116.1 million debut to set a new March and non-sequel opening weekend record.

This is the Top 10 Midnight Openings. Appart from The Hunger Games, all of them are sequels.

Top 10 Midnight Openings
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 – $43.5 million
2. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 – $30.3 million
3. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse – $30.1 million
4. The Twilight Saga: New Moon – $26.3 million
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 – $24 million
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – $22.2 million
7. The Hunger Games – $19.7 million
8. The Dark Knight – $18.5 million
9. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith – $16.5 million
10. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – $16 million

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